How Geotargeting Works

For any offer set to target geographical regions, our external service provider determines the location of a user based on their IP address. Then, our ad tracking servers use that information to determine if the user is inside the target regions for the offer.

When Enforce Geotargeting is set to “Enabled” for an offer, only users in the target regions are served the offer. If the offer is in an offer group, users may be directed to another offer in the offer group instead:

Enforcing Disabled

Enforcing Enabled

Not in Offer Group

Users see the offer regardless of their location.

Users in the target region see the offer.

Users outside the target region see a blank page.

In Offer Group

Users see the offer unless another offer in the offer group targets the user’s location.

Users in the target region see the offer.

Users outside the target region are redirected to another offer in the group that targets the region.

If no offer in the group targets the region, the user sees a blank page.

For example, you have an offer that targets the United Kingdom and the United States. If a visitor from Spain clicks on that offer, they’re instead directed to a blank page.

Keep in mind that because the geotargeting feature uses IP-based geolocation, it is subject to the limitations of that process.

Working with Advanced Targeting

If you set an offer to target geographical regions, then HasOffers follows the above table for offer groups and enforcement.

Adding & Modifying Geotargeting Settings

This geotargeting article includes targeting at the city level, which is available to enterprise accounts only. If you have a pro account, see our Geotargeting for Pro Accounts article.

To add or modify an offer’s geotargeting settings, go to that offer’s page, then in the Targeting panel, click the Edit button. On the next page, you can set up targeting rules in the Geotargeting panel to include or exclude specific countries, regions, and cities.

In the Included Locations field, enter the countries, regions, and cities you want the offer to target. Then in the Excluded Locations field, enter the countries, regions, and cities you don’t want the offer to target.

As you fill out each field, you can select matching locations from the dropdown menu as they appear or remove selected entries using the X icon.

Important: You can either include or exclude locations at each of the city, region, and country levels—you cannot do both. This ensures that your inclusions and exclusions overlap without duplication and function as expected. If you provide an invalid set of inclusions and exclusions, you’ll receive an error letting you know which field needs to change.

Example 1: Exclusions

Let’s say we want our offer to target users all over the world, except for a few specific cities. To do that, we’d use the following geotargeting rules:

Include

Exclude

City

“Seattle, Washington, United States”
“Toronto, Ontario, Canada”

Region

Country

As a result, all users except those in the cities Seattle and Toronto can access the offer. Note that there’s no need to include other regions or countries unless we want to exclude specific parts of them.

Example 2: Inclusions & Exclusions

Let’s say we only want our offer to target users in the United States and Canada, but we want to exclude a few specific cities, and a single region. To do that, we’d use the following geotargeting rules:

Include

Exclude

City

“Seattle, Washington, United States”
“Toronto, Ontario, Canada”

Region

“Texas, United States”

Country

“United States”
“Canada”

As a result, users from countries other than the United States and Canada won’t be able to access the offer. Plus, users in all cities and regions of the United States and Canada can access the offer unless they’re in the cities Seattle and Toronto, or the region Texas.

Example 3: Invalid Setup

Let’s say we want our offer to exclude users in Saudi Arabia, but want to ensure that users in the state of California can still access the offer. To do that, you might try to use the following geotargeting rules…

Include

Exclude

City

Region

“California, United States”

Country

“Saudi Arabia”

Unfortunately, this is an invalid set of geotargeting rules! Here, we receive the error:

Cannot mix inclusion and exclusion targeting rules with unrelated locations: california (5) is not within the countries provided.

This is because California is already excluded when including Saudi Arabia and not the United States. To fix this setup, all we need to do is remove California as an excluded region.

Testing Geotargeting

Sometimes, network employees or affiliates may need to test an offer from outside targeted regions. To do so, they can bypass geotargeting rules either by using cookies or by adding a test parameter to their tracking link.

Cookie Bypass

Geotargeting is bypassed for employees of your HasOffers network who are logged in when they click on a tracking link. The employee goes directly to the default offer URL.

When an employee triggers a conversion on the offer, the conversion appears as “Employee Test” in the conversion report status message.

To see the effects of geotargeting on your location, load the tracking link in a web browser where you aren’t logged in to HasOffers. By doing so, you avoid having a network employee session cookie in your browser.

Tracking Link Test Mode

Tracking links marked for testing bypass geotargeting rules. To mark a tracking link for testing, add a source parameter with a value of “testoffer” to the tracking link. For example:

7 Comments

This doesn't make any sense. You're taking into account the fact that every of your clients knows exactly all the cities of each country in the world.
The waste of time to create offers now with metropolitan cities or states targeting will be simply ridiculous. Good for nothing.

Thank you for your comment! I've passed this on to our product team. You can also reach out to them directly to discuss your concerns by clicking on the message icon at the bottom-right of your network's screen.

We have offers that should work everywhere in the world except USA and Canada.
It is ridiculous to enter every country in the world (except USA and Canada) in terms of effort. The previous setup you had for geo-targeting was light years ahead in terms of functionality.